In the World of the High Tech Redneck, the Graybeard is the old guy who earned his gray by making all the mistakes, and then tries to keep the young 'uns from repeating them. Silicon Graybeard is my term for an old hardware engineer; a circuit designer. Here are mental droppings from a newly retired radio engineer running from tech news to economics; from firearms to the world at large; from radio to home machine shops and making all kinds of stuff.

Saturday, August 31, 2013

Back In The Saddle, So Let's Catch Up

The work trip I mentioned at the end of the previous post was more intense than I expected, and resulted in spending longer days than I'm used to working, leaving no time to tend to the blog. I was in Toronto, Ontario, which is a first time for me, to visit a company that supplies parts to Major Avionics Company, where I work. I traveled with two other guys whom I know but have never spent that much time with.

As a Floridian almost since birth, I've seen a lot of population growth. Areas turning from cow pasture to housing developments and condominiums seemingly overnight. Dredge and fill operations turning muck into dry land with channels cut out to deeper water and inviting waterfront housing. But I don't think I've ever seen as much in building going on as in the downtown Toronto area. I swear there was a crane every 500' across the city, from ground level to building tops. It was rather amazing. I don't know what you guys are doing up there, but God love you, as Joe Biden says. Nice to see someone embracing growth and profit.

(grainy iPhone pic from a parking lot)

It might be disappointing the Global Warming Zealots that while this season is supposed to be active, we haven't had a hurricane in the Atlantic yet, the last day of August, for the first time in the last 11 years - and I don't think one is possible for several days. A local hurricane analysis site says that only 12% of the last 60 years have not had a hurricane by now - average date of the first Atlantic Hurricane is around August 10th, IIRC, and the chances of getting enough storms before the end of the season to meet the numbers called for by the famous Colorado hurricane predictions is about 5%.

While the people who study hurricanes for a living say the correlation between global warmening and hurricane formation is far from proven, ever since Al "second Chakra" Gore put a picture of a hurricane coming out of the smokestacks of a nameless CO2 source, warmists have believed that higher sea surface temps necessarily mean more hurricanes. The situation is much more complex than that, with global circulations, like the El Nino/La Nina Cycle (also called ENSO or the El Nino Southern Oscillation) playing a major role, as well as the Atlantic Decadal Oscillation and probably others. The ENSO cycle is rather neutral now, not particularly conducive or disruptive to hurricane formation. Those who follow it know a strong El Nino really disrupts hurricane formation by shearing the tops off the storms.

I don't know how many people saw this, but Bamster put Cass Sunstein on the oversight committee tasked with looking at whether or not the NSA has been "doing us wrong". Sunstein is the guy who famously wrote the book "Nudge". The idea behind the book is simple: we all have an inner Homer Simpson
and an inner Mr. Spock who run our decision making. While the Ruling
Class Elites are under the control of their inner Spock, personally you're ruled by Homer. You're too stupid to make good choices, so the wise and wonderful government will make them for you. (coincidentally, I'm sure, the Yiddish word for an annoyingly nagging person is a noodge - which sounds almost like it, and is pretty darned appropriate).

The paper also suggests that the government “formally hire credible
private parties to engage in counterspeech.” That sounds an awful lot
like the 50 Cent Party of online commentators who are paid per comment by the Chinese communist party to sway public opinion.

ZeroHedge called him "America's Goebbels", Hitler's head of the Ministry for Public Enlightenment and Propaganda.

If you ever had any doubt NSA oversight was going to be joke, you can go back assuming the government has established itself as a ruling tyranny with absolute contempt for its citizens.

2 comments:

The thing that the Canadians are doing right is to be smart/lucky enough to have about 30 million people in a country with enough natural resources for 330 million, Then to have a "rich" country on their doorstep of about 320 million people who want to buy the resources from you.

One of my favorite sayings is "all the planning, foresight and ability in the world never beat pure dumb luck".

Another factor they have is the "rich country on their doorstep of 320 million" is institutionally so stupid that they won't develop their own resources, which is enough for that bigger country, out of fear of various boogeymen.

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Retired radio engineer, follower of Christ, RF designer, mentor. Radio ham, home shop machinist, lapidary, silversmith, roadie cyclist, learning to be a rifleman, and home defender, - a guy with too many interests to keep track of.

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